J. L. Austin Quotes About Language

Quotes about: Language

• Certainly ordinary language has no claim to be the last word, if there is such a thing. It embodies, indeed, something better thanthe metaphysics of the Stone Age, namely, as was said, the inherited experience and acumen of many generations of men.

  J. L. Austin

  Philosophical, Men, Age

• Next, 'real' is what we may call a trouser-word. It is usually thought, and I dare say usually rightly thought, that what one might call the affirmative use of a term is basic--that, to understand 'x,' we need to know what it is to be x, or to be an x, and that knowing this apprises us of what it is not to be x, not to be an x. But with 'real' (as we briefly noted earlier) it is the negative use that wears the trousers.

  J. L. Austin

  Real, Knowing, Negative

• Ordinary language embodies the metaphysics of the Stone Age.

  J. L. Austin

  Age, Ordinary, Stones

• Certainly ordinary language has no claim to be the last word, if there is such a thing.

  J. L. Austin

  Ordinary, Lasts, Language

• However well equipped our language, it can never be forearmed against all possible cases that may arise and call for description: fact is richer than diction.

  J. L. Austin

  Diction, May, Facts

  "Philosophical Papers". Book by J. L. Austin, edited by James Opie Urmson, Geoffrey James Warnock, p. 195, 1979.

• Let us distinguish between acting intentionally and acting deliberately or on purpose, as far as this can be done by attending to what language can teach us.

  J. L. Austin

  Acting, Austin, Purpose

  "Philosophical Papers" by J. L. Austin, James Opie Urmson, Geoffrey James Warnock, 3rd ed., New York: Oxford, (p. 273), 1979.

• A sentence is made up of words, a statement is made in words.... Statements are made, words or sentences are used.

  J. L. Austin

  Language, Used, Made

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